Over the last few years in particular, the capabilities of the Internet have grown dramatically, with the introduction of new protocols (i.e., XML), advanced browsers, electronic commerce capabilities, and other features.
Numerous commercial enterprises are now attempting to somehow profit through this new infrastructure, in many cases by providing services that attach a smaller incremental monetary value to a particular transaction.
One such type of capability is the pay-per-click (sometimes including pay-per-impression) search engine popularized by Google Inc. and other companies. In accordance with such a capability, a user goes to a search engine, and inputs the name of goods or services as keywords that they would like the search engine to find. Various providers of goods and services register their websites with the search engine and these are provided to the user in a list which is prioritized by the level of compensation which the merchant will give the pay-per-click or pay-per-impression company if the user is routed to their site. For example, using such a system, if a user types in the keyword “binoculars,” the pay-per-click or pay-per-impression system might return five potential links or banners, with the most prominent one being associated with that supplier of binoculars which will compensate for a penny or a few cents more than the links/banners presented below.
One problem with existing systems, is that a user may cause an undesirable level of expenditure on the part of the merchant by over-clicking on a particular link. In some cases, it has been known that some users have done this simply for the purpose of undermining a particular provider or competitor. Since the existing systems have no way of knowing whether a link through is legitimate or bogus, the provider of the goods/services winds up having to pay the pay-per-click provider excess sums, with the fraudulent perpetrator remaining un-reprimanded. Similarly in pay-per-impression systems, the fraudster would just keep searching for the same keyword so as to have many unnecessary impressions. These fraudulent impressions could adversely impact the competitor's finances.
Search has revealed the following related art.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/244,467 (“Pay-per-click Fraud Protection”): The method described in this application is different because it does not disclose the generation of two codes on the server side and the concatenation of those codes as recited in the main claim of the present invention. In fact, the method in 11/244,467 differs from the present invention because it relies on computing probabilities of occurrences of click events.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/234,476 (“Click fraud resistant learning of click through rate”): Although this application talks about computing click through rate, the method employed is different and it does not involve the generation of two codes on the server side and the concatenation of those codes as recited in the main claim of the present invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,043,471: Although this patent mentions click fraud detection, it does not explain how click fraud is detected. Therefore, it does not disclose many elements of the main claim of the present invention, including the generation of two codes on the server side and the concatenation of those codes.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,020,622 and PCT International Publication Number WO 02/091225 A3: Each of these publications disclose the tracking of user activity on the Web including interactions with Web pages and click-through navigation to select Web sites where purchases can be executed. It does not disclose the generation of two codes on the server side and the concatenation of those codes as recited in the main claim of the present invention. Indeed, each of the systems of these prior art publications does not apply to the same context as that of the present invention. Both these prior arts apply to a clearing-house and affiliate network. The relation between the clearing-house and the affiliates allow users' activities to be tracked. In contrast, the present invention applies to a search engine and the web sites of advertisers. In that context, the search engine cannot track the activities of users while they access the advertisers' web sites.
V. Anupam, A. Mayer, K. Nissim, B. Pinkas, and M. Reiter, On the Security of Pay-Per-Click and Other Web Advertising Schemes. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on World Wide Web, pages 1091-1100, 1999: This paper describes the detection and prevention of an attack on a pay-per-click network using a referrer and JavaScript. It does not, however, disclose the generation of two codes on a server and the concatenation of those codes as recited in the main claim of the present invention.
C. Blundo and S. Cimato, SAWM: A Tool for Secure and Authenticated Web Metering. In Proceedings of the 14th ACM SEKE International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, pages 641-648, 2002: Although this paper relates to click fraud detection, it does not disclose the generation of two codes on a server and the concatenation of those codes as recited in the main claim of the present invention. Rather, it uses a system involving encryption with a secret key and a plug-in that executes on the client side.
Jakobsson, P. MacKenzie, and J. Stern. Secure and Lightweight Advertising on the Web. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on World Wide Web, pages 1101-1109, 1999: This paper does not disclose the generation of a second code and the concatenation to a previously generated code as recited in the main claim of the present invention. Rather, it discloses the use of electronic coupons.